Shortages of chicken-pox, tetanus and other vaccines are rampant. How to protect your kids

This is national infant Immunization Week. Now that's not a subject I would normally deem column worthy, but in this case the irony is too rich to ignore. For even as it celebrates the benefits of childhood vaccination, the U.S. is running out of the very vaccines needed to do the job. The biggest shortfalls: chicken-pox vaccine, various tetanus vaccines and the so-called pneumococcal conjugate vaccine.

Here's another paradox: the U.S. government is about to spend $850 million to make sure there's enough smallpox vaccine to protect every man, woman and child against the theoretical risk of a bioterrorist attack....